Recent years have seen the explosion of Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Initially developed to allow universities and researchers to communicate and cooperate in research projects, it has grown into networks offered at a mass-market level. Nowadays, it is normal for households to have a connection to an IP network to surf the world-wide-web, play interactive games, carry Voice over IP, download documents and softwares, make electronic business transactions, etc.
Reference is now made to FIG. 1, which represents a prior art example of an IP network 100. Typically, an IP network is composed of an access domain 115, network service provider domains 140 and application service provider domains 150. The access domain 115 includes Access Nodes (AN) 120 and an access network 130, which may itself be an IP sub-network. The ANs 120 are access providers, which can offer access to the IP network 100 to user domains 110. The user domains 110 include for example User Devices (UDs) (such as computers, mobile phones, personal digital assistants, etc.), Local Area Networks (LANs) and Wireless-LANs (W-LANs). The user domains communicate with the ANs over various possible technologies. Amongst those technologies can be found dial-up connections and Asymmetric Distribution Subscriber Line connections over telephone lines, cable modems connecting over television cable networks, or wireless communications. The access network 130 is composed of a group of independent switches and routers, which task is to switch/route incoming data traffic based on a destination address embedded therein. As for the network service provider domains 140, they may correspond for example to Voice over IP services, while the application service provider domains 150 may correspond to electronic banking and electronic business transactions.
Though FIG. 1 depicts three user domains, two Access Nodes, two service provider domains and two application service domains, IP networks 100 typically include several thousands of user domains, hundreds of Access Nodes, hundreds of network service provider domains and application service provider domains. As to the access network 130, it is common to encounter networks including hundreds of switches and/or routers. It is thus understood that FIG. 1 depicts a highly simplified IP network 100 for clarity purposes.
The initial principle at the basis of IP networks is to rely on routers, which perform as few and as little operations as possible before routing incoming data traffic towards their final destination. In application, such a principle results in “best effort” networks that result in a trade-off between quality of service and quantity of data traffic. An increased quality of service, for the same number of routers results in a lower quantity of data traffic being transported on those routers. Hence, IP networks have not been designed bearing in mind higher level of quality of service. For those reasons, IP networks have difficulty supporting data traffic for network service provider domains and application service provider domains that require a higher quality of service, and especially more so with the current explosion of user domains.
There is currently no known end-to-end solution to allow IP networks to support a broad range of quality of services, with the increasing number of user domains and network service provider domains and application service provider domains exchanging data traffic. Furthermore, no long-term solution has been identified to allow a tangible and non-destructive solution to the need of increased Quality of Service (QoS) for certain services and applications.
Accordingly, it should be readily appreciated that in order to overcome the deficiencies and shortcomings of the existing solutions, it would be advantageous to have a decentralized node, an access node, and an access edge node, along with a method, for efficiently transporting aggregated data traffic between service providers and end-users over an access domain. It would also be an advantage to have a method and nodes that allow for a coordinated usage of the access network while providing various levels of quality of service. The present invention provides such a method and nodes.